Corporate Butt Rock Reviews: Linkin Park - Crawling
It appears my services have been requested: Traditionally, our culture perceives classical music as the epitome of what music should be; and though my knowledge of it is extremely limited, I know I can't disagree from a technical standpoint. Classical composers are the greatest, most innovative and knowledgeable, at the craft of manipulating sound and silence to, in turn, manipulate human sensation and perception. HOWEVER: Classical music is not simply an act of nostalgia, or memory recollection, as it were or would be. Rather, the music is capable of both ENHANCING previously experienced and theorized emotions, and even CREATING new original, unique instances of such things, whether the person in the role of the senser/perceiver has sat in the "captain's seat" as one may put it... the man, woman, child, or other experiencing the break-up, the death... the tragic fall from the stars... or perhaps the falling in love, the birth or rebirth... the ascension. It is my judgment that Linkin Park's "Crawling" is a happy medium between traditional rock 'n' roll sociomusical norms and what we, our relatives, and our ancestors have turned to Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven to for experiential advancement, or even novel humanistic experience. I know that some simply hear the shrill screaming, the "crying out for help", and interpret it as juvenile; a grown man pouting as if he were a child. That is not what I believe "Crawling" is about, and I find interpreting it in such a manner is crude, and a monumental disservice to the scope of the work itself. Rather, I believe it to be representative of a new experience of sorts. It's so dominant and simultaneously submissive that all the narrator can SENSIBLY communicate to us is his need to escape his wounds, or the pressure instantiating these, presumably emotional, scars. He cites a lack of self-control, and something 'pulling' him beneath the surface. Another voice--whether it's him, or a reinterpretation of himself, who's to say--joins in to name pressure and lack of confidence as either triggers or symptoms of the enemy him, her, or perhaps, itself. What's telling is that he isn't calling out to you, me, or even the Lord; despite the fact that he's sensing so much pain and perceiving an awesome lack of self-esteem... and though he's scared, and as scared as scared can be... he's obviously not hopeless, and he's obviously calling out to he, HIMSELF! If he was hopeless, he wouldn't scream; he wouldn't be asking for an answer, and though people can sense what they are thinking and feeling without even whispering to themselves, we find the man screaming... at himself... with a friend, or perhaps a voice of another personality of sorts within him, SHRIEKING out! It's a surface paradox... to BEG for communication... an answer, guidance... a reliever of crippling stress... things that are known to drive a person delirious and incapable of controlling themselves... YET only he can prevent his own DEMISE, or seemingly eternal DAMNATION! We never learn what happens. The song quiets out... goes to silence as all songs do... and we're left without a resolution. Consider The Beatles' "For No One", and how it loops on itself to represent the seemingly eternal suffering of domestic neglect and apathy. That is my 'rating', or perhaps the more precise term would be, 'understanding.' Of course, nothing is provable, and by God's will, we live in a universe that is like a cardboard box, in the sense that we simply wish to acknowledge what we KNOW we can perceive, or what OTHERS we know can perceive. What we have difficulty understanding is that there may be thoughts, feelings, ideas that we simply cannot wrap our heads around.